Abroad in America: What Really Happens at a Trump Rally?

Hello! This week I’m in Erie, Pa., where I’ve just been to one of the more arresting spectacles of the 2018 election calendar: a campaign rally featuring President Trump.

President Trump loves rallies! He loves the adoration of the crowds who attend his rallies! He traveled here at the very moment Hurricane Michael was barreling across Florida because, he said, remaining in Washington to monitor the storm’s devastation “would have been very, very unfair to thousands of people” waiting to see him in Erie.

These events, which he has been attending frequently as the midterms approach and which consist of crowds of fans cheering and chanting while he promotes local candidates (and himself), are not unique to him; President Barack Obama had his fair share, too.

But Mr. Trump is different, as much carnival barker, showman and self-promoter as politician, particularly when he wanders off-piste and into extemporaneous soliloquies about his favorite topics: the superiority of Donald J. Trump and the evilness of Donald J. Trump’s enemies. (This second group includes the Fake News media, Hillary Clinton and “the radical Democratic mob,” i.e., the Democrats.)

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Hyperbole is a fact of politics, and presidents can seem dangerously close to being subjects of cults of personality when basking in the adoration of their hard-core fans. But Mr. Trump’s hyperbole is of a different magnitude, and so is his audience’s eagerness to embrace the president’s strikingly high regard for himself.

His victory in the 2016 election, he said at the rally, represents “the greatest revolution ever to take place in the country,” which is a bold statement when you consider, for instance, the existence of the actual American Revolution.

Mr. Trump went on for a bit in this vein, making increasingly sweeping statements about his triumphs, his opponents’ disasters and his place in history. The crowd, about 9,000 people wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and T-shirts printed with slogans like “God, Guns, Trump,” ate it all up and clamored for more.

He gave a few examples of Trumpian achievements. Some new sand being shipped in to help a local waterway — directly attributable to him. The country’s economic prosperity and low unemployment rate — directly attributable to him.

(Although in the past the president has often taken credit for record rises in the stock market, he did not mention the fact that the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 800 points on Wednesday, the beginning of a massive sell-off that continued Thursday. Earlier he blamed it on the Federal Reserve.)

Mr. Trump dearly wants to hang on to Pennsylvania in the coming election — the state normally votes Democrat, but swung Republican in 2016 — and so intermittently stopped discussing himself to get to the second matter at hand: his favorite local Republican candidates, and their loyalty to him.

These included Representative Lou Barletta, who is trailing in his Senate race against a Democratic incumbent, Bob Casey Jr.

Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Baretta was running only because he, Mr. Trump, had told him to, and that Mr. Baretta had bravely appeared at the rally despite the recent death of his brother. (“He doesn’t want to talk about it,” the president told the crowd. Nobody mentioned it again.)

There was also Representative Mike Kelly, who is currently polling ahead of a Democratic challenger, Ron DiNicola, and who agrees 100 percent with Mr. Trump about Mr. Trump’s accomplishments.

“Every single day, in every single way, every American is stronger because of this man,” Mr. Kelly said. “I have seen the resurrection of the greatest nation the world has ever known.”

The border between what Mr. Trump believes, what his supporters believe, and what his favored candidates believe, appears to be very thin. When I wandered around at the end of the rally, I found that people were giving him excellent reviews.

More than that, she said, his policies had brought jobs back to the state after a downturn.

“Now they’ve been able to find jobs,” she said, of the region’s laid-off workers. She could not say what the new jobs were, exactly. “Of course, some of them have had to move away,” she added.

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What’s the Legislative Branch, Anyway?

“I’ve always wondered about the roles of, and the differences between, the Senate and the Congress. (Oh, and why only one of them is called the “House of Representatives” — is the other not representative?)” — Denis Williamson, Brit living in Hong Kong

I am not surprised that you’re confused. It is confusing! Part of the problem is the unhelpful way some of the words can be carelessly thrown around, so their meanings get muddled up.

But let’s cut through the murkiness. The country’s legislative branch is known as the United States Congress, and it comprises two chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives. (They meet in the U.S. Capitol building, whose location — Capitol Hill — is sometimes used as a synonym for Congress, as in “Capitol Hill is saying …”)

In general, laws cannot be enacted without approval by both houses, as well as by the president. But each chamber on Capitol Hill has a different role in the legislative process. (Did I mention that it was confusing?) For instance, the Senate votes on a president’s Supreme Court nominations, while the House is the originator of federal funding bills.

Each state, from the largest (Alaska) to the tiniest (Rhode Island) gets two senators, making 100 in all. Senators serve for six-year terms.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has 435 members, with each state’s representation dependent on the size of its population. California, the most populous state, has 53 representatives; a bunch of sparsely populated states, including Wyoming and South Dakota, have just one apiece.

They serve for two years, which is not a lot of time. If it seems as if they’re always campaigning, it’s because they are.

Confusingly, given that both groups belong to Congress, members of the House are often addressed as “Congressman” or “Congresswoman,” while members of the Senate are always addressed as “Senator.” House members can also use the honorific “Representative,” as in “Representative Brown returned to Capitol Hill …,” but senators are still called only “Senator.”)

The Republican Party currently controls both chambers of Congress. Any leftward shift in the coming elections could throw control of one (or both, in the Democrats’ dreams) houses to the Democratic Party, which might make things difficult for President Trump for the next two years.

And then it’s 2020! And another election.

About That Open Job at the U.N.

Last week’s sudden resignation by Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, created a plum job vacancy for the president to fill. As is often the case, he was not inclined to place a cone of silence over his thoughts.

“Dina is certainly a person I would consider, and she is under consideration,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday, speaking of Dina Powell, a Goldman Sachs executive who has since reportedly declared that she in fact does not want to be considered, thank you very much.

But then the president’s mind wandered around and came to rest upon his daughter, Ivanka Trump, currently working for him as an (unpaid) senior adviser.

“I don’t think there would be anyone more competent in the world,” he said.

“It has nothing to do with nepotism,” he went on. “But the people who know, know that Ivanka would be dynamite. But then I’d be accused of nepotism, if you can believe it.”

Even a joking suggestion of this kind might have been a huge deal in a different administration. But with President Trump, it barely registered.

I consulted social media to read the debate about the merits of giving an important diplomatic role at such a delicate time to a First Daughter with no relevant professional experience.

“The idea that we are talking about Ivanka or Jared as a replacement for ambassador to the U.N. is such a joke I can’t even process this,” Zerlina Maxwell, a political analyst, said on Twitter, referring to Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, who is already serving as a kind of back-channel envoy to the Middle East.

Most of the tweets were in a similar vein, though some admirers said they liked Ms. Trump, and liked the idea.

“It is an honor to serve in the White House alongside so many great colleagues and I know that the President will nominate a formidable replacement for Ambassador Haley,” she wrote. “That replacement will not be me.”

In Abroad in America, Sarah Lyall attempts to help our international readers (and maybe some American ones, and maybe herself) understand what is going on as the United States approaches the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Subscribe here.